Slavery era

Author: Guo Moruo
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-02-01
Features: What is the purpose of the well-field system? It is not, as Mencius said, that eight households share a well, with the central hundred mu serving as public land and the surrounding hundred mu as land given to the eight households for common use. That is entirely Mencius's utopian idealization. Those square fields were not given to the common people but to the feudal lords and officials. The feudal lords and officials received the land and then distributed it to farmers to exploit their hard labor. Therefore, the well-field system had two purposes: for the feudal lords and officials, it served as a hierarchical unit of stipends; for the direct cultivators, it served as a unit for assessing diligence and laziness. – The Age of Slavery
This book is a collection of academic essays on history and archaeology by Guo Moruo. Most of the articles were written in the early years of the liberation period and primarily discuss the division between the slave society and feudal society eras in ancient Chinese history. In the early history circles after liberation, there was no clear consensus on the timing of the transition between slave society and feudal society. Some scholars set the division in the Western Zhou Dynasty, others believed it was during the transition between the Western Zhou and Eastern Zhou, some considered the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties still belonged to the slave society, and some even placed the division as late as the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Each school held its own views, with no unified conclusion. Through in-depth research on numerous key issues such as the rise and fall of the well-field system, the historical facts of human sacrifice in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the distinction between slaves and serfs, the essence of the Han Dynasty's regime, and the development of ancient scripts, Guo Moruo successively wrote over ten articles included in this book. With the thoroughness of his evidence, the rigor of his arguments, and the scientific nature of his reasoning, he refuted various opinions and firmly established the division between the slave society and feudal society in ancient China as occurring between the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. This book not only opened up new perspectives for later historical research but also provided a scientific model in methodology, thereby solidifying Guo Moruo's important position in the history of historiography.